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Teacher contract approved: What’s it mean for teachers?

It sounds like the district got at least part of what they wanted regarding instructional time. What did teachers get, besides modest cost of living raises for two out of three years? What’s the teacher mood?

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Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

7 Responses

I am not a teacher, but from what I can see of the contract there is NOT additional instructional time.Teachers may be assigned duty for 7.5 minutes before and after the STUDENT DAY. The board wanted 15 minutes.
Hardly a great gain for the board as teachers were probably already there.

If you read the Oregonian Trudy Sargent made a big deal that they could now pay teachers to tutor and other things after the end of the school day. They already could do that. It’s called extended responsibility and the teacher gets their hourly pay. It was already in the contract. Apparently they didn’t realize it.

There is not additional instructional time or an increase in the amount of periods a teacher must teach a day. No increase in workload. As a teacher who sees over 180 students a day now this was the major issue. Not pay.

With the district pushing writing can you imagine how much grading time another class would take. It would be time to retire.

At our school, the “writing teacher” no longer comes into the classrooms and work with students. She now describes herself as a “support person.” She used to comes into all the classrooms in grades 3-8 and help the kids learn to write pieces that would pass the state test. But she doesn’t come into the classrooms any more, although her position is still .75 FTE. How’s that for “cutting back”?

Looks like the district blinked on this one. I don’t see one area where the PAT gave in and lots of areas where the district caved. So, we almost went to “war” over 7.5 minutes? 19 months over quibbling over 7.5 minutes, um, ok, that makes sense (?!). Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot.